Instant lottery tickets (e.g., “scratch-off” lottery tickets) are sold at many types of retail locations including, stores, such as grocery stores, general merchandise stores, and the like. Various configurations of lottery ticket dispensers have been proposed in the industry for this purpose, including electronic dispensers that automatically dispense a ticket from a bin or compartment upon receipt of an electronic command signal.
The typical scratch-off lottery tickets are delivered to retail establishments in the form of an interconnected strip in a fan-fold or rolled configuration, wherein perforation lines define individual tickets. In this regard, the individual dispensing bins must be equipped with a mechanism for separating the tickets in a reliable and repeatable manner. Failure of the final ticket separation process can be costly. For example, if the dispenser does not separate a ticket exactly along the perforation, the ticket may be “unsellable” or information needed for verification can be separated from the ticket and lost.
In addition to achieving a reliable separation of the correct number of leading tickets, the dispensing bins should also prevent pulling of additional unintended or unauthorized tickets from the bin (sometimes referred to as “reeling” in the industry). Conventional electronic ticket dispensers generally use a motor-driven wheel opposed by an idler wheel, wherein the continuous strip of tickets is conveyed through the nip defined between these wheels. Ticket reeling can result, for example, from a vendor exerting an excessive pulling force on the leading ticket during the dispense cycle that exceeds the frictional engagement between the drive wheel and the ticket, or may also be the result of a fraudulent attempt to pull on a leading ticket edge in an attempt to extract unauthorized tickets from the dispenser. This issue has been addressed in the art in various ways. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,272,001 and WO 1994/020908 describe a ticket dispenser that utilizes a ratchet mechanism or gear to lock rotation of the internal dispenser drive wheel after a dispense cycle. U.S. Pat. No. 5,833,104 describes use of a brake wheel that engages the drive wheel and prevents rotation thereof after a dispense cycle.
The present invention is directed to an improved system and method for preventing ticket reeling in a lottery ticket dispenser